Effect of palladin depletion on terminal differentiation of C2C12 cells.

<p><b>(A)</b> Phase contrast images of stable transfectants at late stages of differentiation. Scale bar is 50 μm. <b>(B)</b> Representative immunofluorescence images of stable transfectants at day 5 of differentiation. Cells were labeled with palladin (red), MyHC (green), and DAPI (blue). Scale bar is 100 μm. <b>(C)</b> Fusion index analysis of stable transfectants at day 5 (left) and day 7 (right) of differentiation. A minimum of 4,000 nuclei were counted from random fields of each cell line. Note that palladin depletion resulted in a decrease of the fusion index at the late stage of differentiation. <b>(D)</b> Quantification of multinucleated myotubes throughout the course of differentiation. <b>(E)</b> Quantification of the number of MyHC-positive cells in stable transfectants. All error bars indicate the means ± SD of at least four independent experiments. * indicates statistically significant difference from control cells, * <i>p<</i>0.05, ** <i>p<</i>0.01, *** <i>p<</i>0.001 by Student’s <i>t</i>-test. <i>ns</i> = not significant.